Chlorophytum borivilianum is a traditional medicinal plant in India, commonly known as Safed musali. It is partly a herb with sub-erect lanceolate leaves belonging to family Liliaceae, a family of 256 species distributed all over the world, with about 17 species found in India.
Predominantly Chlorophytum borivilianum is used as nutritive health tonic or health vitalizer especially for geriatric and general sexual weakness and also for motherhood where it is a curative for pre and postnatal problems as well as lactation enhancer. It is accepted as restorative for immunity improvement; hence it is also given for treating jaundice, gastro, and urinary track infection. Use of Chlorophytum borivilianum as a remedy for diabetes and arthritis has also been advocated. In Ayurvedic system of medicine, different preparations of Chlorophytum borivilianum are used for treatment of different symptoms or diseases. It is also a principal ingredient in many Unani and Tribal medicine mainly in Rajsthan and Gujarat. However the most popular use of Chlorophytum borivilianum roots is as Aphrodisiac and sex tonic for males
Moreover now it is being considered a neutraceutical and efforts are as to make chips and flakes from C. borivilianum roots in some countries
On account of its medicinal use in various disciplines like Ayurveda, Unani, and use in modern herbal products as well as its use by tribal healers, especially for its reputation as restorative tonic for males, there is a very vast demand for Chlorophytum borivilianum all over the world. To meet these huge demands there has been continuous ruthless depletion of Chlorophytum borivilianum. Although it was widely available in Indian forests demand is increasing rapidly in Indian and international drug markets. There is report for its foreign demand being estimated to be 300-700 tones annually, a quantity that Indian forests cannot support. In nature Chlorophytum is propagated through roots and roots are the medicinally useful part. Once the root is harvested from any place, the whole plant dies and reseeding never occurs at that place. Thus its depletion is much faster than the pace of its regeneration in nature.
Chlorophytum borivilianum is not under commercial cultivation as medicinal crop in any part of the world except in India. Due to ever-increasing requirement of Chlorophytum borivilianum and its high commercial value there have been attempts to in India to start commercial cultivation of Chlorophytum borivilianum. Cultivation by conventional propagation method is known to take long time for multiplication because of the low rate of fruit and seed set, poor seed germination and viability. It is reported that there is 8 months dormancy and seeds and germination percentage in the seeds of C. borivilianum is as low as 25-30 percent. Also often root and rhizome accumulate active ingredient only when they attain specific growth or development stage over a time. Furthermore the use of the root finger as means for propagating Chlorophytum borivilianum, as an alternate to seed would not be very good proposition since roots are the required organs for medicinal purpose.
However, the vegetative propagation through its fleshy roots is a very popular and easy method of commercial cultivation of Chlorophytum borivilianum. Two to five fingers along with the part of crown (depending on the length of finger) weighing between 8-15 gm is most suitable as planting material. Availability of the roots as a planting material at reasonable cost is one of the major problems of serious concern in large-scale multiplication of Chlorophytum borivilianum. Though there are some initiatives with respect to the commercial cultivation of Chlorophytum borivilianum, due to limited numbers of growers, the planting material is available at a very high cost which has made Chlorophytum borivilianum, very costly crop. There are also instances of many fungal species attacking this crop. The purchasers, that are new growers wanting to cultivate C. borivilianum unaware of these fungal infestations, buy and use these infested roots as planting material. Moreover in the name of the control, the farmers are reported to dip the infested roots in very high concentration of mercurial fungicide.
Besides high cost and poor availability of planting material, lack of technical information and proper market for the end produce are another restraint in large-scale cultivation of C. borivilianum. 
Moreover, as per conventional cultivation practices, the C. borivilianum is a popular rainy season (kharif) crop in India and a commercial root harvest is obtained in 3-4 months. Thus limiting the cultivation of C. borivilianum only to specific period of the year that is monsoon, and thereby the fresh roots cannot be obtained round the year by such conventional cultivation methods. Moreover due to the uncertainty of rainfall, such rain dependant method of cultivation cannot always be relied upon for the market requirement.
Therefore, in view of the afore mentioned drawbacks associated with the conventional propagation methods, there exists a critical need for providing a method for Commercial propagation of C. borivilianum which is devoid of shortcoming of conventional cultivation, faster, and economical for large scale multiplication and can provide the planting material at an economical cost to the farmers.
Furthermore, due to the fact that there are more than 175 species of Chlorophytum reported in the world, they are used as ornamental plant, in India, it is treated as medicinal plant. There are about 13 species of Chlorophytum have been reported in India for example C. arundinaceum, C. tuberosum, C. laxum, C. breviscapum etc. All these species are totally different in medicinal properties but due to lack of correct information all species are known as Safed Musali in Indian drug market. In the reputed books of Ayurveda the plant mentioned as Safed Musali can be correlated only to Chlorophytum borivilianum. 
Therefore in view of the above it is imperative to provide a means for in-vitro mass culture of Chlorophytum borivilianum for large-scale multiplication which is economical can also provide a reliable method specific to authentic Safed Musali that is correct species of Chlorophytum that is C. borivilianum and produce on the commercial scale the true to type clones of elite variety with disease free root tubers of uniform quality.